


There is a Roadway, Muddy and Foxgloved

by hedgerowhag



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1920s, Alternate Universe - Historical, Fluff and Humor, M/M, Skywalker Family Drama, Summer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-27
Updated: 2019-06-27
Packaged: 2020-05-20 23:22:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19386532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hedgerowhag/pseuds/hedgerowhag
Summary: The summer cabin fever is making Ben sick on the hills above the Dover cliffs in the house his mother has rented. Shame Hux isn’t there.—1920s artist au based on fanart concept.





	There is a Roadway, Muddy and Foxgloved

**Author's Note:**

> Titled from ‘as it was’ by hozier 
> 
> Based on the art I did which can be found [here](https://twitter.com/st_hedge/status/1135947558629584896?s=21) and [here](https://twitter.com/st_hedge/status/1137027864266780673?s=21)

“Ben—! One more picture!” Leia is rushing around the photographer from the murmuring lump of her family toward the french doors of the house she rented for the summer.

Ben throws his jacket onto the settee and starts unbuttoning the tight, woollen sweater when Leia’s shoes click into the house. He grabs for the pad of paper with the pages open on a struck line of charcoal. The box with the black stubs is still open from when Ben was pulled out from behind the coffee table to get dressed and get behind the camera. His glass of cold tea is still standing there with a sad slice of lemon drifting on the top.

An easel had been behind the coat rack for when Ben decides to paint Dover cliffs from the view on top of the hills.. But the photographer’s camera stand had broke and they are miles away from any shop or studio that might have a part to repair it. The easel did nicely with the help from a few turns of gardening rope.

It took another fifteen minutes to dislodge the photographer from Luke after he noticed his prosthetic arm. Luke tolerated with a patient grimace the questioning about his stationing in the ‘Great’ War until Leia directed him to his place in the photo. It had been enough time to cook all the assembled in the garden under the August sun.

“I’m not getting into another picture!” Ben yells, not looking at Leia as he marches to the tall, hardwood table underneath the west facing window. “Yesterday was enough!”

“Ben…” Leia stops to sigh and leans on the settee. “It’s the only time I managed to get everyone together; even Luke came back from America— Ben— Leave the table alone—BEN!”

He has managed to lift it by the frame on the underside and carry it toward the front door – left open to let a breeze through the house.

Leia watches from the living room as Ben navigates the door frame and the table legs. He manages with several scrapes to the white paint and a scuff to the steps down to the garden path. There are cars parked in rows by the house and in front of the barn where the the picnic table had been left after a quick escape from the rain.

The weather softened timber of the fence and gate are leaning on the rose bushes with peach and pink flowers. Ben drops the table on the sun burned grass on the other side of the gate. He rolls up the notepad and stuffs it into the back pocket of his slacks with the box of charcoal. His fingers and the creases of his palm are already dirty with the dust that breathed out through the gaps of the lid.

Ben inhales deep, feeling the salt from the ocean underneath the white cliffs settle in his gut, and lifts the table. With a hand on each side, he carries it over his head toward the blue shade of the trees where the grass is still alive.

The leather noses of the shoes pinch on Ben’s toes and the heels rub through the socks as he walks the dozen meters away from the house. With his arms lifted, the sweater rides up and itches the nape of his neck with the coarse hairs that stick to the sweat underneath his hair. While the pants feel too wide, too free, the shirt is too tight on his elbows and chest. Leia picked out the clothes, said that she had them altered, and that he will look good in them. Ben didn’t want to dress in any of it, but with the silent but persistent pleading from Han to comply with Leia, he did it. At least she didn’t ask him to cut his hair again.

Leia promised it would be one picture. But then there was a second, a third, different combinations. But the sun did not stop cooking Ben in the woollen clothes.

Lando fell asleep on a chair at the garden table with a glass of lemonade which was offered by Rey. Han and Luke went comatose with the dogs on their laps while Chewie and Leia tried to herd both the photographer and the ragtag grouping of family and friends. Holdo tried to hold Poe and Finn together as they crept away to unbutton stiff collars. Unused to dresses, Rey shuddered when her knees unstuck from the tack of sweat after keeping her legs crossed for too long.

Ben snapped and left the back garden, too warm and uncomfortable, itching with sweat and the prickling hairs of wool.

In the grove of the trees, on the top of the hill above the cliff edge, Ben rolls the table onto its legs. The paper pad cracks on the table top and the box of charcoal drops beside it. Ben can smell the sweat on his lip when he sighs, considering the absence of a chair.

The front door of the rented house is closed. Someone has put the gramophone’s needle to the record which thumps over the sound of the clap of the camera in the back garden.

Ben walks into the house and grabs the chair under the window that was knocked back against the sill when he lifted the table. He swings the chair over his shoulder when Leia comes to watch him from the kitchen doorway.

“You can have the rest of the week to paint and draw,” she calls after him. “Can’t you offer a minute of your golden time for me?”

“Already did!”

The seagulls squeak above the birch grove like barn door hinges. The pages of the notepad are flipped by the wind, blank and fresh, still untouched since Hux bought it for Ben in Oxford.

“You could do with another one, after you decide the last one is ruined after the first page,” Hux commented as he slipped the pad from under Ben’s arm to pay for it. Ben stayed by the stands with brushes, running his fingers over the tiny fans to turn his red face away.

Ben stabs the chair legs into the cooked ground and sits. The table is too far away, so he pulls it forward, making it jump over a root and slouch on the incline.

Ben presses down the flap of the notepad with the charcoal box after removing the stub of a broken piece. To his left are the faces of the white cliffs. He looks at the fissures and the green caps of grass as he rolls the charcoal between his fingers, leaving black tracks, before setting the stub to the paper.

Ben always leaves smudges on Hux’s face after he kisses him. He tries to make sure his hands are clean and brushes them down on his shirt or tie. But when he pulls away and drops his hand from Hux’s cheek, there is always a print of a black thumb on his pallid skin. He leaves tracks, like pins on a map.

In Northumbria there is property owned by Brendol Hux, an estate inherited from several generations of military men. He has been staying there since the war, hibernating like a badger, and left the investment business to his son to manage. It has him catching trains up and down the country and sometimes Ben and Hux meet somewhere in the middle. Sometimes it’s London, sometimes Coventry, Leeds, Oxford. But Hux couldn’t come to Dover.

Ben drops the charcoal on the page as he pushes off one shoe with the toe of the other. He kicks his leg, flinging the black and white glossy trap for sores and broken nails down the hill toward the cliff edge. He fidgets with his toes to remove the other shoe, before ripping it off with his hand and throwing it, bouncing it over the bumps of the hill side out of sight.

Biting his tongue, Ben scratches off a damp sock, rolls it into a ball, and sends it after the shoes. He forgets the other when the rolls of the sweater’s sleeves collect on his elbows and under his arms, digging in and cutting with the coarse wool hairs.

Ben’s lips are cracked as he works to take off the grey sweater. His hands slip on the brass buttons and he almost moans when he rolls off the sleeves and the linen shirt comes unstuck from his back. The sweater doesn’t fall as far as the shoes, but it outmatches the sock.

Ben stares at the chair before swinging it too. The polished timber slips from Ben’s hand and cracks on a birch, tearing away curls of silver bark. He lifts the splintered pieces and tries again, throwing the shattered leg after the maimed seat.

The straps of Ben’s braces slip off his shoulders as he hunches, breathing hard through his slack mouth. He looks at the table and the pages of the paper pad being leafed in the wind, occasionally flipped to the grotesque black cliffs he sketched.

The front door of the seaside house opens. Ben watches Leia step out, immediately lost behind the roses when she walks down from the steps. He doesn’t have the time to brace for her when an engine shoots down the dust ploughed road to the house from the fields.

Ben turns away from the table and looks down the path. The black shell of an Alvis Tourer shines in the sun as it is throttled toward the house, the roof down and the wind rushing through the interior of fine black leather. Ben steps out from the birch grove and marches to the side of the path as the Tourer starts to brake.

Leia is at the gate when the car pauses at Ben’s side and he opens the passenger door, sitting down beside Hux. He crosses his legs, pressing his bare toes into the glove box as Hux turns the car. Ben looks over his shoulder and sees Leia, standing between the roses with a glare of blank disappointment. Ben grimaces and jerks his hand in a wave.

“Forgot your shoes?” Hux asks as he stares over the rod thin steering wheel.

“They took a walk down the cliff.”

“Planning on joining them?”

“Keep driving.” Ben gets comfortable in the car, settling into the black leather and tipping his head with the wind. “I thought you were in Bath?”

“There were cancellations,” Hux tells him. “Shipments never came.”

Ben looks across at Hux. He is wearing a stiff black jacket over a red jumper with a tie pulled tight into the collar. His hair has been torn back by the wind, the sharp parting gone.

“I have been driving all morning and I want to step out of this fucking car some time soon.” Hux finally looks at Ben, catching his pale eyes on him. “How far do we have to drive from your mother?”

“Other side of the country?”

Hux scoffs. “Find yourself another driver, your majesty.”

The sun falls into the car cabin, bringing the copper back to Hux’s hair and the distinctions of shade between his black jacket and the black of the breeks tucked into tall, laced up boots.

“You could’ve come to the house,” Ben says, looking ahead at the fields. “Mum saw us last time, when you got distracted by my buttons. She said that I could at least introduce you to dad.”

Hux strains his jaw and coughs, sitting deeper in his seat.

“What?” Ben sits up and stares at Hux who is fixed on the road along the side the fields of the cliff edges.

Hux only swallows and shoves one elbow on the door to cover his eyes from the sun with his hand. “Didn’t you say that you wanted to draw when you arrive here? Then let’s find something for you to draw.”

There is a light house with wheat fields and a grove of trees two hills over from the rented property. The wheat looks ready to be cut, heavy in the wind coming over the pale cliffs. There is an insect hum in the stalks and in the pastures with tall flowers.

Ben feels the car’s engine shut down, shuddering into the quiet and puffing out a sigh a Hux shakes off his jacket. Hux wipes at the back of his neck, pushing aside the short spikes of damp hair. From the inside pocket of his jacket, Hux takes a notepad with a leather cover and a pen in a silver case. He places them onto his seat after stepping out of the car.

The straps of the braces have slid from Ben’s shoulders by the the time he has the remaining sock off. The straps are probably meant for wider shoulders; Ben’s slouch and droop, dropping off somewhere sadly instead of standing wide and rigid like people assume by his size.

Ben walks on the path from the car to the light house barefoot, feeling the pricks of stones and the broken wheat stems his heels and toes. He is holds the notepad and pen braced in either hand.

Hux is standing underneath the light house, arms crossed and eyes half closed, staring at the vague hazed horizon though his eyelashes. Ben sits on the wall circling the building and opens the notepad, leafing through the digits and scribbles of barely distinguishable words to the first fresh page.

A piece of a torn scrap with creases and lines from being folded repeatedly falls onto Ben’s lap and almost slips onto the ground. Ben snatches it and holds it to his chest with a flat palm to keep the the wind from tugging it out of his grip and slowly slides the paper into his fingers.

There is deep blue ink, washed out by heavy drops of water and scribbled over again, hatching in the lines of the Leeds train station roof. It’s where Ben had last seen Hux; they were both passing through and decided to stay in Leeds a little longer. Hux was going up to Manchester while Ben was returning to Cambridgeshire before setting off for Dover within two weeks.

Ben can’t remember if it was raining, but his pockets were overfull of tickets, coins, notes, and the sketches which were drawn on scraps of torn edges of the newspaper he bought that morning. Everything was falling freely onto the platform and his train was pulling in toward the station. Hux was trying to shove as many things as he could back into his pockets and some into his own.

Ben flips the pages of the notepad and finds more pieces, evenly flattened out and fitted in between the leafs.

“Did you iron these out?” Ben mutters, fitting the pieces together on the back page of the notepad.

The chocked hacking makes Ben look up. Hux is staring ahead, but his face is red now – almost purple on his nose and cheeks.

“Are you getting sunburn?” Ben closes the notepad and taps the pen on the crinkled spine. “How long were you on the road with the roof down?”

“It’s fine—“ Hux pulls on the collar of his shirt. “It’s just too warm.”

Ben looks back at the notepad with the torn corners of paper sticking out as Hux pulls off his sweater and sits down. Hux drapes the sweater on the wall beside him after dusting off the stone, and then there is quiet. Ben tries not to move when a hand pulls at a strap of his braces, pulling it off his left shoulder and down his arm. It’s wrapped around the knuckles like a leash, tilting Ben closer.

He tries to keep the smile down when Hux touches his chin to turn Ben’s face. But he fails to hold back the grin when Hux kisses him with his hand spread under Ben’s jaw. They both go in to bite in the same moment and Ben laughs before licking over Hux’s open mouth and kissing the corner. Hux bites him then and shows his teeth, but returns the kiss.

They don’t have the time to start things slowly, so they aren’t shy. Ben is pulling on the front of Hux’s shirt, slipping the buttons out of the holes. With his hand on Hux’s neck, he presses up against him as they kiss, and drags his leg over Hux’s knee.

There is a hand on Ben’s thigh, hitching him closer as his face starts burning. Hux dazes him with kiss after quick kiss, until Ben’s mouth is hanging open and Hux is free to lick over his teeth and tongue.

Ben feels drool drip down the corners of his mouth and his chest starts to become tight. The remaining strap of his braces has fallen down onto the crook of his elbow which he squeezes against the knuckles of the hand that Hux snuck onto his waist.

When Ben is completely out of breath, he pulls back from the kiss and pushes his mouth and nose against Hux’s neck. He fills his empty lungs with the smell of the fabric and the sweat that collected there on Hux’s skin under the heat of the sun. He breathes, slowly bringing his head back down from reeling.

The shift of Hux’s chin against Ben’s temple unbalances him. Ben opens his eyes, head turned against Hux’s shoulder. Sun spots prickle in his eyes as he looks down at the sea.

 

The foam on the lip of the pint has dried into a thin bitter crust. Ben licks the glass before putting his lips to the rim and drinking the warming beer, searching for the cold in the dregs . He is watching Hux speak while he swallows.

They are at a table in front of the pub adjoined to an Inn at the crossroad splitting for the country and the towns. The evening has grown hotter and the dry air and the pollen buffeted from the chamomile patches is making Ben’s nose burn.

Sweat has made the collar of Hux’s shirt soften and sleeves stick under his arms. His sweater is slipping from the back of the chair, the front of his shirt has been unbuttoned to the top of the vest underneath. Ben doesn’t know where the tie went. It had disappeared at some point while he was distracted by a young woman trying to snatch a young man into the cover of her lace parasol while the couple sat at a table beside the vine coated red brick wall.

Hux has been talking about America, Ben is on his third pint. He is slipping down the chair that has been polished by hundreds of drunk asses, studying absently the oak growing over the red Inn. The straps of Ben’s braces are falling down his shoulders. He yanks up the right and then the left, twisted over, and wipes his damp hands on his knees.

Their legs are slotted together under the table, bare feet resting on top of boots scuffed grey from the dust. Ben’s head drops forward and rolls onto his shoulder when he drags himself toward the pint glass. His throat hurts from being dry and his lips are tight and crusted together.

Hux has his chin on his hand. Ben realises he is silent. Drips of beer hit the front of his shirt and he rips the pint glass away from his mouth. The flat beer drools down his chin and onto his throat, under the shirt collar. The glass rattles and spins on its base on the table as Ben wipes at his chin.

The heat and the beer, and the itch of woollen clothes is making Ben feel a little sick.

“Are you already drunk?”

Ben twitches when Hux straightens the strap hanging on the crook of his elbow. He flattens it down with his palms.

“No—It’s jus’ the sun,” Ben tells him. “Tired.” He can feel the braces start to slip again.

“Have you eaten?” Hux asks.

Ben shoves the straps off his arms and lets them hang limp. Hux frowns and crosses his arms on the table. His hair is limp with sweat. Ben wants to pull on the small hairs that curl at his temples and the nape of his neck. His stubble must be coming through, but the hair is so fine and light Ben would only feel it against his hands, or his lips.

The chair jolts on the dry ground when Ben sneezes. He winces, swallowing the mucus in his throat.

“Now don’t you dare vomit,” scolds Hux. “Did you say your mother has a dinner party prepared for almost half of the village?”

Ben inhales the snot brimming from his nose. “Just family—friends.”

Hux sighs and the sweater is pulled off from his chair. He uses the hem to wipe across Ben’s face, scrubbing underneath his nose and across his lips.

“Now it will definitely have to be washed.”

Ben chokes on a bubble lodged in his throat. His face is red when he can breathes clearly again. His feet have dragged trenches in the ground – there is grass and lumps of dried dirt between his toes. Ben drops his head back and lets it fall over the back of the chair, closing his eyes. He breathes deep.

The glass is dragged across the table from Ben. “I should take you back to the house,” Hux tells him.

There is a lapse, in the time Hux stood from the table and walked around it to yank on Ben’s hair. He must have fallen asleep for those few seconds. Hux pulls until Ben’s neck is straining and the chair is shaking.

“Get up,” Hux scoffs when Ben squints at him. “Idiot.” Ben flinches away from the finger that prods his forehead.

  
The drive to the house is slower than the escape. Ben has his head on Hux’s shoulder and both arms through the sleeves of the jacket which he dragged on backwards. The seams are tight on his elbows, but it’s the most comfortable thing Ben swears he has ever worn.

His head rolls from the narrow shoulder when Hux’s hands shift of the steering wheel. Ben’s dirty feet slip on the leather seat. There are grey smudges on the upholstery, and black ones on the collar of Hux’s shirt. Ben sees some on his jaw and neck. Ben’s eyelashes feel like they are stuck with glue and his eyes are burning from the dim purple light of the early evening – still bright enough for bird song.

Swallows wisp in the cattail reeds like bats, snapping ribbon leaves in the trails of wind. There is a smell of the summer stagnant water in the lowlands and the manure from the fields. Ben’s face feels sun and wind burned and the dried sweat is itching.

The dusty seat is as comfortable as a bed of cotton sheets that are cool in the morning in spite of the heat. Hux lets him sit in the car in front of the house a moment with his hand in Ben’s hair, twisting the damp curls into tighter coils around his fingers.

“You can sleep later,” Hux tells him.

“I’m fine here,” Ben argues into the collar of the jacket.

“But I’m still sober, and I suppose there will be wine or champagne at dinner.”

“—Always the fucking champagne.”

“Then, since there are no rooms left in the house and I can’t drive drunk all the way to Bath where a hotel room is waiting for me, I guess I will have to stay in your room.”

“Fuck you.”

Ben drags his head from Hux’s shoulder. The car door has to be opened for him and the gravel of the path makes him wince as he steps out.

They walk back side by side, Hux’s arm across Ben’s back guiding him to the front door where a lamp is hanging over the porch with moths and flies straining to get a lick of the burning oil. The tables and chairs are being dragged on the floorboards inside the house. Glasses are clacking in chorus with the voices. Ben hiccups while Hux opens the door, leading him in.

 

 

 


End file.
